Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Until President John F. Kennedy put
a stop to it, his mischievous sister-in-law Ethel wasn’t above
toppling a visiting politico or two into the family swimming
pool.

That’s as scandalous as it gets in Rory Kennedy’s
affectionate, playful profile of her mother, Ethel Skakel
Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Billed as the first Kennedy film directed by a family
member, HBO’s “Ethel” is endearing and warm-hearted, if
ultimately too guarded to stand as the work of historical
significance it might have been.

The youngest of Bobby and Ethel’s 11 children, Rory Kennedy
was born six months after her father’s assassination in 1968.
The Emmy Award-winning director (“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib”)
interviews seven of her surviving siblings, as well as their
press-shy mother.

“All this introspection,” Ethel, now 84, tells her daughter.
“I hate it.” She chokes up only once, when asked about her
husband’s assassination. “Talk about something else,” she says.

“Ethel” delights in the antics of the Kennedy kids --
sliding down White House banisters, gawking at FBI sharpshooters
at target practice -- and turns appropriately somber with the
inevitable tragedies.

Seamier fascinations go unmentioned, and there we see the
mother in the daughter: “Ethel” talks about something else.

“Ethel” airs Oct. 18 on HBO at 9 p.m. New York time.
Rating: ***

‘The Girl’

Alfred Hitchcock once sent little Melanie Griffith a macabre
Christmas gift: A doll, made up to look like the child’s mother,
Tippi Hedren, in a tiny coffin.

HBO’s “The Girl,” a behind-the-scenes drama about
Hitchcock’s creepy sexual obsession with Hedren while filming
“The Birds,” does not include the doll story.

That’s not the only missed opportunity that leaves us
waiting for next month’s big-screen “Hitchcock,” starring
Anthony Hopkins.

Based on Donald Spoto’s book “Spellbound by Beauty” and
directed by Julian Jarrold, “The Girl” gets the impersonations
and ’60s vibe right. Toby Jones is as good as Hitchcock as he
was as Truman Capote in “Infamous,” and Sienna Miller is lovely
as his Grace Kelly substitute.

But the movie adds little to the familiar take on
Hitchcock’s cruel, lascivious attempts to mold the inexperienced
actress into his idea of perfection.

Vulgar Advances

When Hedren rejects his repeated and vulgar sexual advances
as wife Alma (Imelda Staunton) simply looks the other way,
Hitchcock makes her life hell.

The harassment reaches a climax with stagehands tossing live
gulls at the actress until she suffers a weeklong emotional
collapse.

“The Girl” breezes past the post-“Birds” flop “Marnie”
before suggesting that Hedren’s career was all but killed by the
vengeful director.

Even with juice like that, “The Girl” isn’t nearly as
involving as you’d expect. It’s thin stuff in a fat suit.